Youth Fellows give voice to Oldenburg citizens

On July 29-20 the two Youth Fellows Fabian and Ella traveled to Oldenburg to lead one of IYTT’s ‘Speak-Up!’pilot summer workshop projects. Supported by the EU, the IYTT is one of 6 partners of the ‘Interregional North European and Coastal Development Fund’ who have called their efforts to transform people into engaged and active citizens ‘Speak-Up’. For this pilot project, IYTT partnered with the city of Oldenburg, another partner of the EU fund. The idea was to bring IYTT’s developed methodology of the ‘Open-Chair-Democracy-Talks (OCDTs)’ to the quaint town of Oldenburg in Germany to encourage youth to step into conversations with the citizens of the town.

The summer camp took place over three days under which 4 participants between the age of 16 and 19 performed OCDTs to identify local challenges and develop strategies to combat those. While the first day focused on an introduction, discussions about democracy and a first try of the OCDT’s, the latter two days pivoted around problem identification and solution brokering. The participants quickly adapted to the OCDT’s, put up two chairs into busy city center spots and invited citizens to talk with them about democracy. Questions asked were for instance, “What would it take to make you feel like a more empowered citizen in the society?” or “Do you think you have any influence on society?”.

Observed were several issues, such as a perceived feeling of immaturity, apathy and disconnection to the topic of democracy. Further observed were gender and age patterns, a lack of resources or language barriers. The participants came up with two solution propositions and one bonus idea. They carefully developed a concept of a youth citizen council made up of individual committees sending a representative from each of the 20 schools in Oldenburg to the collective youth citizen council. The youth citizen council will work closely with the administrative body of the city. A second idea was a political discussion room specifically for women, with a daycare corner for children and varying workshop topics.

The bonus idea of a democracy festival aimed at catching people who just happen to cross the city center to engage with a multitude of entertainment as well as education topics.

Due to the efforts of the coordinator for participation and inclusion from the city of Oldenburg, Katharina Meiners, the participants were able to present their innovative ideas to the mayor of Oldenburg and other local democracy organizations. The mayor positioned himself especially enthusiastic about the youth council, and approved of the other two ideas. Selected people were directed to follow up on the ideas to check implementation possibilities, directly bringing the voices of the people of the street to the administrative body of the city. For the IYTT, the city of Oldenburg, and the Speak-Up initiative this was a huge success and relevant parties are in discussion for a repetitive integration of such OCDT methodology.

Ella Levien & Fabian Wiek, Youth Fellows, IYTT